“I wanted to see you, Aiden.”
“Why are you prowling around? Why didn’t you just knock?”
“I wasn’t sure this was your house. I remembered the street, but not the address. I didn’t see your dad’s van, so I went looking for your old Cavalier in the garage to make sure.”
“I don’t have that car anymore. I wrecked it about a year ago.” Aiden’s shock at seeing Conrad standing on his parents’ front stoop momentarily overshadowed his disappointment that he was not Daniel coming to sweep him away like he’d so often fantasized. Unbelievable after nearly three years, speaking with his ex-boyfriend.
“Are you alone?” Conrad moved closer, looking more confident.
“Pop’s gone for work, Mama’s upstairs watching TV. Why?”
“Perfect. I was hoping we could talk.”
“Talk?”
They sat at the dining table sipping canned beers Aiden had retrieved from the utility room refrigerator. He sat at the head of the table, his laptop and notepads pushed off to the side; Conrad sat catty-corner to his left. Ignoring his better judgment, Aiden had had no option but to invite Conrad inside. He hadn’t wanted to hurt his feelings by refusing him. He’d travelled so far, all the way from Michigan, his home state. Aiden had learned a few years ago that he had been living there with his boyfriend, the one he’d dumped Aiden for.
He was still in disbelief, looking into the face of his ex-boyfriend. After so long apart, he looked much the same. Square jaw, pale blue eyes, reddish-blond hair cut in the same high-and-tight style he’d had ever since they had first met, when Conrad was in the ROTC program at college.
“What brings you back to live with your parents?” Conrad asked, his hand clasped around his can of Coors Light.
Dazed, Aiden said, “Just decided it was time to move back to Maryland. Been busy with freelance work, haven’t had time to look for a place of my own.”
“Are you seeing anyone?”
Aiden shook his head. “No,” he said, suspicious of what it was Conrad really wanted to talk about.
“Neither am I.”
“What about that man? The one you left me for back in Chicago?”
Conrad lowered his head. He fingered the tab on his beer can. “Things didn’t work out with him. We broke up. Last summer actually. We were living back home in Michigan. I stayed on because of my job, but I got laid off in April.”
Despite everything that had happened between them, Aiden was sympathetic, but apprehensive as well. Was Conrad there because he’d nowhere else to go? Was he desperate for money and shelter? Conrad had never been that close with his family in Michigan and would likely have few others to turn to. Aiden laid his arms across the polished ebony of the tabletop and folded his hands.
“Why didn’t you just call instead of coming all the way out here?” he asked.
“I lost my cell phone a couple months ago, with all my numbers in it. Thanks to speed dial I can’t remember peoples’ numbers. Besides, you never returned my other calls.”
“What other calls?”
“I left you messages.”
Aiden recalled the one short text message Conrad had sent him about a year ago, the day he’d gone on a buggy ride with Daniel and the children to break in Gertrude. He wondered if Conrad had texted him that summer in need of companionship after his break-up. He never did bother to reply to Conrad’s text. He had wanted to keep Conrad in his past. Now here he was, sitting at his parents’ dining table, within arm’s reach.
“Why didn’t you just look up my parents’ ground line?” he asked.
“I wanted to surprise you.” Conrad showed his even white teeth.
“How did you know I was back home?” Aiden was guarded.
“I was in Chicago a few months ago and ran into an old friend of yours. He remembered me but I didn’t really remember him. He told me you got some job with a newspaper in some small town I can’t remember the name of now. I called the only newspaper in town, but the man who answered said you quit and moved back with your parents.”
“You called The Henry Blade? Why?”
“I wanted to get ahold of you. What do you think I came all the way down here for? I never really stopped thinking about you, Aiden.”
Aiden dropped his eyes. Twiddling his thumbs, he studied his blurred reflection in the polished table top. His mind came to a slow halt.
“I’ve really missed you, Aiden.” Conrad inched his hand across the table toward Aiden’s. “With my new job and all, I started thinking a lot about—”
Aiden jerked his head up. “You have a new job?”
“Yeah. A buddy of mine works for a software company. He set it up for me. I started last month. Awesome, huh?” Conrad beamed one of his double-duty smiles that used to make Aiden quiver. Did it still? “I was in the same boat as you. No prospects and nothing going on. I was just about to move back in with my parents like you when my buddy came through. Losing my other job was a blessing in disguise. I’m bringing in more money than ever.”
Relieved Conrad wasn’t desperate for money and a place to stay, but still defensive, Aiden said, “So why are you here? It’s been nearly three years, Conrad.”
“Like I was saying, I’ve been thinking about you a lot lately. About us. I was hoping we could maybe start over.”
“Just like that?”
His mind traveled back to that day Conrad had left him so abruptly in Chicago after a short two months together in the city. He’d come home from his part-time job to find him practically out the front door and gone.
Now after all this time he wanted to come back.
“What do you say, Aiden? Another shot?”
Conrad had come all the way from Michigan to Maryland just for him. No man had ever chased after him before. He’d always been the one who did the pursuing. He had followed Conrad all the way to Chicago after Conrad had gotten that job offer; he had moved to Henry just to be near Daniel. It was nice to be the pursuee for a change. Still, he resisted allowing flattery to sway him.
“I don’t know,” he said. “It’s so quick. A lot has happened since you left. We’re not the same people anymore.”
Conrad brought his hands closer to his chest and sighed. “I’ve never understood what that means. Of course we’re the same people. I’m still me. See?” He framed his face with his hands.
“That’s real deep.”
“Aiden, you know what I mean.” He leaned forward and reached his hands back across the smooth table. “We were together for over a year. In gay terms, that’s like a lifetime.”
“What about that man in Michigan?”
“I told you, that’s over. It was over pretty much from the start, to be honest. I was an idiot to leave you. I admit that now; I made a mistake. We all do sometimes. It doesn’t change the fact that I still want to be with you.”
Conrad was someone he had once loved and with whom he’d assumed he would spend the rest of his life. It wasn’t so much he was hurting about his running out on him so abruptly; he had gotten over that. But how could he trust him after he had abandoned him? He knew that Daniel was now in his past and that in a few weeks he would be married to Tara. He would recover from him fully too, he supposed. Nevertheless, he surely did not wish to spend the rest of his life alone. How many other chances would he get?
Other than Daniel, Aiden had yet to meet another gay man like Conrad who shared his love of the outdoors and backpacking—rugged outdoors and real backpacking, not backpacking through Western European capitals. Were he and Conrad meant to be together after all? Was it some kind of sign, a clue from God, the way the Amish always talked about?
“Come on, Aiden.” Conrad lowered his voice. “Let’s try again. What do you say, huh? The best part is we can stay here—we can stay in the DC area, I mean.” His pale blue eyes widened. “Wouldn’t that be great?”
“What do you mean, stay here?” Aiden eyed him. “What about your new job?”
“My job’s in Alexandria.
”
“You mean you’ve been in Virginia all this time? The past month?”
“Yeah, since April. I remembered your old boss saying you moved back home. You were just down the road practically. How coincidental is that? I lucked out you were still here with nothing going on.”
Aiden sighed. So Conrad hadn’t come all the way from Michigan to Maryland just for him. He had been in the area the entire time. His coming to his parents’ house was a matter of convenience, a mere whim. He never would have traveled all the way from Michigan just for him. It had taken him a whole month just to drive the forty miles from Alexandria. Conrad’s old selfish ways were resurfacing.
“Aiden?” Conrad reached across the polished table and tried to take Aiden’s hand in his, but Aiden pulled back.
“I guess you’re right,” Aiden said. “Maybe we haven’t changed much.”
He stood up, pushing his chair out with a discordant screech on the wood floor, and peered out the darkened window. He’d never felt more alone.
“Aiden, don’t you see? It’s perfect. We’re both already here, with no connections to anyone or anywhere else. Chicago is in the past, for both of us. We can live in Alexandria. Start new, fresh. I already have a great apartment. Fourteenth floor! And there’re gays everywhere—”
Aiden shot him a scowling look. “I don’t care about that.”
“You know what I mean. We can live happy there; we don’t have to hide. We can be ourselves.”
“You mean you can be yourself. I won’t be happy there.”
“Why not? It’s practically where you’re from. It’s barely an hour from here.”
“If neither of us have any obligations, with our entire lives open to us, why not move somewhere out west? Like Montana?”
Conrad slumped into his chair. His arm slid off the table and into his lap with a dull thud. “That again,” he said, sighing heavily. “I was hoping you had grown up in the past few years. Hard to imagine you’re still hanging onto that old fantasy. You’re too much of a dreamer, Aiden. Move out west? What do you think it is? 1850?”
“I used to think you liked that sort of thing. Remember how we used to go backpacking in college?”
“Those were weekend trips, Aiden. You can’t live like that every day. You’re not being realistic.”
Turning back toward the window, Aiden muttered, “It’s realistic if you want it.” The corners of his mouth hung heavy. He felt sapped of hope. Why did Conrad have to come back? Why did he have to magnify his loneliness? Just when he was getting past Daniel, past everything, Conrad brought back that razor-sharp awareness that he was destined to be alone forever. Why did he have to tease him with ideas that he could find love again?
“These romantic notions of yours are going to get you into big heaps of trouble one of these days, Aiden. Look at you. Twenty-four and—”
“I’m twenty-six.”
“Even worse. Twenty-six and still living at home. So much for your ridiculous dreams, huh? A lot of good it’s gotten you. With me you could at least have a life.”
“Yeah, well, I guess I’m just not interested in that kind of life,” Aiden said, thinking about Daniel’s imminent marriage and the Montana mountains.
He wanted to say more but remained quiet. He was tired. He’d been in love with this man not too long ago; now he wondered what had attracted him so much that he had followed him all the way to a city he’d never set foot in before. Conrad had been the one who had introduced him to backpacking. Had he expected that to be enough? He had thought they had wanted the same things; now he realized they never did.
Lonely or not, he would not commit to someone out of desperation. He did not relay this insight to Conrad. He was too worn out to get into a quarrel with him. He knew from experience it would lead to nothing but personal insults and ego-driven accusations.
No, Conrad’s double-duty smile no longer worked on him.
He replayed in his mind his own words from just a moment ago: It’s realistic if you want it.
His dream was always to go west, to Montana. Why shouldn’t he? He had as much chance of making something of himself out there as he did in Maryland or Illinois. Why not go where he’d rather be? If it didn’t work out, he could always come back home, just like he had when things soured in Henry. No harm taking an extended trip at least. No reins held him back.
Let Conrad and the others scoff at him. What did he care? What made them such exemplars of how one should live?
Feeling more determined than ever, he looked deep into the glacier-blue eyes of his former boyfriend. A sense of resolve filled his chest. “I think we’re done talking, Conrad.”
Chapter 26
Two days after Conrad’s surprise visit, Aiden packed his little Aveo with his backpacking gear, laptop, and other essentials, adequate for at least a month, and pulled away from his boyhood home, waving goodbye, once again, to his smiling parents. He wasted no time heading out on his western excursion. Too much time had already languished. If he waited any longer, he knew he wouldn’t go through with it.
If things worked out and he found a suitable life out in Montana, he’d send for what was left of his belongings. His parents, who had never traveled west of Nashville, Tennessee, had said they might even want to drive them out for him.
He had never set off alone on such a long journey before. Fear could not hold him back this time. For once he needed to heed his own advice. No ties restricted him from doing anything or going anywhere he wished, just as he had told Conrad. His dreams could never come true if he didn’t at least try. Stagnating in his old bedroom in Maryland was hardly the answer.
For the first time in his life, he was traveling to a place without chasing after someone. He had trailed after Conrad to Chicago. He had moved to Henry just to be near Daniel. Eventually, he’d even run back home to his parents in Maryland. This time, he was going off on his own, without the safety net of knowing someone would be on the other end waiting for him.
When he neared Pittsburgh, he almost turned back for home. The farther he pulled away from Maryland, the more his nerves pinched. Driving through the western suburbs of Chicago his second morning out, he had to fend off the urge to postpone his trip to Montana entirely. The draw of the I-57 interchange stole his mind away from everything else. It was almost surreal. In two hours he’d be back in Henry. Out of fear, loneliness, longing, he wanted badly to take that exit. But as he drove, his eyes peering through the rain smeared windshield, he used all his strength to keep heading west. He sat on his uncertainties, forcing himself to keep the steering wheel straight.
He knew going back to Henry would prove pointless. Daniel was on the verge of marrying Tara. Their wedding had been set for mid-June. Here it was June second. The community must be in a buzz about it. Organizers and volunteers must have already sent out hundreds of invitations to Amish communities from Pennsylvania to Iowa. Surely the community by now had completed rebuilding Daniel’s farmhouse, destroyed by that tornado. Daniel had been renting his land to an English farmer. After the wedding, he and his bride would certainly want to live there and raise a family.
No use even thinking about any of it. His dream of Daniel was dead. As dead as that opossum, lying on the side of the Interstate east of Rockford, he had just whizzed by.
The remainder of the way to Montana, he stopped by a few sights he’d always wanted to see: the Badlands, Mount Rushmore, Devil’s Tower. Three days after leaving Maryland, he crossed the Wyoming border into Montana. He’d made it. He was driving through a state he had dreamed about visiting since he had set out on his first backpacking trip with Conrad seven years ago. Nerves fluttered inside his stomach like a flock of birds.
Nine hours later (a huge span of time, he thought, for traveling halfway through one state), he reached a place outside Kalispell, thirty miles south of Glacier National Park. A small convenience store designed to look like a log cabin grabbed his attention away from the looming Rocky Mountains and lush foothills. H
e reckoned he should load up on a few supplies before entering the park, where he was going to spend his first few days backpacking. There would be few services once inside the park.
The young store clerk was congenial. His familial warmth made Aiden more at ease. While the clerk tallied Aiden’s items, he warned Aiden to wear layers for his trip into Glacier, for it was still cold up in the mountains.
“How did you know I was going up there?” Aiden asked.
“I can see all your gear stuffed in your car.” The clerk nodded toward the large window overlooking the parking lot. “And your license plate. Maryland, huh? That’s a haul.”
Aiden chuckled. “Sure was. But worth the trip.”
“Made snow up on the Lewis Range the other day,” the clerk said. “Winter hasn’t yet left us.”
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